


Distractions

by lookingforatardis



Series: Previously on Tumblr [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Filming, Fluff, In order of chapters these ficlets are, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, long distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 14:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14917310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforatardis/pseuds/lookingforatardis
Summary: (previously posted on tumblr)Little ficlets. That's all, no reason just wanted to write little ficlets.





	1. It's okay

His eyes scanned my body, tender and eager, lost and afraid. “It’s okay, really,” I tell him, because it’s true, because I need him to understand that it’s alright if he looks at me, if he truly looks and takes his fill of who I am. “You can look.” He turns red, embarrassed that I’ve caught on though he isn’t subtle. I knew the first day we’d met that he had a fascination with the way I carried myself, so unsure outwardly and yet completely confident in myself. So unfamiliar, so completely reversed of himself. It was flattering, his wandering gaze, his inquisitive study of my body and mind throughout the days and nights, never ceasing to flutter away when caught. I didn’t want him to worry, though. It was okay. Because if he could look, then I could as well. I could look and look and look and not worry if he could see how desperately I was already falling, how lost I already felt when he wasn’t near, how helpless his ring made me, how pointless it felt when he took it off and smiled. We begin filming tomorrow; his eyes won’t be the only thing I’m granted soon, but I don’t want it stop. So I tell him again, “It’s alright if you look.” I tell him, “I don’t mind.” He nods with a small smile, his ears pink, his eyes flitting down to my torso as his hand rubs the back of his neck, my body responding and warming in kind. I don’t ask what it means, and he doesn’t offer. 

Soon, I’ll have his skin against my body, the only thing haunting me no longer his eyes but his flesh, bare and sacred against my own, hands skimming and splaying where I’ve only dreamed so far. I don’t need answers, not yet. I just need more time. 


	2. Time Zones

Another missed call. It had been happening for over a week, these missed calls. The time difference wasn’t hours  _that_  bad in retrospect; there was no reason we should be missing each other this often. His schedule was the opposite of mine, though. Our window of opportunity was slim to none most days, and all it took was a misguided smoke break to throw us off enough to miss calls. Texting was the most efficent form of communication, but even then it was only one or two exchanges a day, our free time clashing until hours passed and I’d only heard “Sorry busy as fuck today. Hope rehearsal is good!!” all day.

Another night of takeout, another rerun on tv, another sleepless night in the hopes he’d call before going to set, sometimes granted a text, sparking a brief conversation that ends in “Please sleep, you need it.” 

It becomes harder and harder to face the reality I can feel seeping into my bones and sneaking up on everything I thought I knew. Not that I was particularly unaware of my feelings, but the depth of them is troubling and pulls me out of my head most days when he doesn’t text back. I need to learn my lines, I need to have them down without issue, but I only want to rehearse with him. 

I catch him late one night, he can’t sleep, he says. Tells me he woke up because there was some sort of commotion and then couldn’t fall back asleep. He runs lines for two hours with me until I feel like crying, my own exhaust making it hard to read– as it turns out, I can only run on a few hours of sleep each night for so long. “Armie, you should–” 

“I’m not going to sleep, not until you have to get off,” I tell him, sipping the now cold coffee on my bedside table, script laid across my lap, my lines nearly perfect in my mind though I feign the need to read them again and again just to hear his voice. 

“I miss you,” he sighs, taking me by surprise and hanging me up by the edges of my soul to dry me out in the absence of him warmth in my arms. “It’s cold here, which is ridiculous because it’s summer, but at night– it’s hard to explain. It just feels colder than New York I guess. I wish I was there. Not that I don’t fucking love this project because I do but you’re, you, you know, I just, I don’t know.” 

“I know,” I manage, understanding completely. “I– I miss you, too.” It’s a release, speaking these words instead of texting them, hearing him hearing me. I start drifting and fight it, fight it so goddamn hard because he’s talking to me and he’s got that middle of the night hesitation in his voice that makes him quieter and gravely and warm, so warm. 

He starts humming, low and lovely like he does when he’s distracted sometimes. It lulls me to sleep, my eyes snapping open with a gasp when I realize what I’ve done, his humming gone, the call disconnected. I stare at his message longer than I should, feel the emptiness creep up my back and settle in my chest. 

_Sweet dreams._


	3. I need to know

“I need to know,  _please.”_

I stare at him, eyes wide, shoulders sagged and defeated, his lip trembling. How far was I willing to push, how far could I take this thing between us until it snapped, until ever fiber of my being cried out for him? Until all there’s left is the echo of his name, of his heart, of his eyes. How far could I possibly prolong this when he knows, when he clearly already knows, when his own resolve is fading and I’m watching him give up on me ever saying it, on me ever accepting the part of myself I’d convinced myself decades ago didn’t exist? 

“Just say it,” he begs, his foot taking a tentative step forward, tempting me, pulling me apart. “Please. I just need to hear you say it, just once, please.” 

“It won’t just be once,” I whisper, my eyes still on the foot between us, the foot I kissed, the foot he tucked under my thigh and wriggled to tease me when we watched movies together. 

“Then it won’t be once,” he says, his voice as desperate as I feel. “Please.” 

“I can’t–” 

“You can, I know you can, you can say it, it’s alright. You’re allowed to feel this, Armie, you’re allowed to be this, you’re allowed to be this with  _me_ ,” he tells me. His voice is so sincere it pulls moisture from my eyes, causes my nose to run, my limbs to freeze. “I love you,” he says, my eyes closing, the words I’d known to be true for so long but hadn’t heard in earnest in even longer. Another step, another, his feet closer to mine than they had been in awhile, our bodies too close for me to focus on anything other than the memory of his arms around my neck and lips pressed innocently against my shoulder. His hands lift, ease into my space, press gently against my skin until I’m shaking, trembling under the touch I’d craved for so long it hurt. 

“Timmy,” I whisper, his hands smoothing over my jaw, tracing lines until they meet the hair at the nape of my neck, something resembling a sob trapped in my throat.  

“It’s okay, I promise it’s okay. No one is going to hurt you for this. No one. I won’t let them. You can be you.” 

“I love you,” I manage, tears trapped in the space between his hands and my skin. “I love you.” He kisses me, slow and careful, afraid to shatter me, I know. Afraid to startle me. Afraid to make it harder for me to stand here and love him without fear, without judgement, without anxiety. He’s so careful I forget he’s even holding me until his hands move, gently and slow, soothing against my hair, my neck, my face. 

“You are so beautiful,” he whispers, pushing my hair back with a small smile. My hands lift and wrap around his wrists as his fingers drop to my neck, grounding me. 


	4. Cold Feet

His toes were cold, they were  _always_  cold, or at least that’s what he told Armie, conveniently, the first time they hung out. A casual form of intimacy with no price to pay, he’d thought. A way to break the physical boundary between them without generating tension, and god knew he didn’t need more tension. But it kept happened, kept being an issue, kept resulting in his toes tucked under Armie’s thighs to “keep warm” even when they weren’t cold at all. He was sure Armie knew, had pretended not to notice, had allowed it to slip past his radar. And anyway, it was comfortable, it was lovely really, the feel of his feet trapped under Armie. So he didn’t stop. 

It had been years and he swore his feet got cold when he so much as saw Armie lounging on a couch or bed as if his body had tricked itself into needing his warmth. Granted, he’d always wanted the warmth. He just didn’t always need it like this. 

“God, you’re such a goofball,” Armie laughed, his arm slinging over Timmy and pulling him closer to kiss his forehead as Timmy burrows his feet under Armie’s thighs, his hands slipping around Armie to pull himself closer as his knees bend to accommodate the position. He smiles and snuggles his face into Armie’s chest, his eyes closed as Armie’s free hand wraps around one of his ankles. “Hey, I got you something,” he says, thumb drumming lightly against Timmy’s skin. He shivers, his toes squirming, Armie laughing as the muscles in his thigh contract. Timmy looks up and smiles. 

“Aren’t you supposed to wait to give me my present?” 

“You apparently need it now,” Armie teases, his fingers tangling in Timmy’s hair. “You can wait to give me mine. I’d like it if you waited actually.” 

“Okay,” Timmy draws out, thinking of the Breitling watch carefully wrapped and tucked away from his prying eyes. 

“I actually cheated, you should know this. I got you two things–” 

“Armie!” 

“I know, I know. But you’ll understand. I’ll give you the other one tomorrow, okay? Just wait here,” he says, standing and walking away. Timmy shakes his head, his feet going cold. He tucks them under himself, his legs crossed as he watches Armie return with a box. He places it on Timmy’s knee. “Open it,” he says softly. 

Timmy does, slowly, his eyes still caught on Armie’s until he has to break contact. He looks down and laughs, his face scrunching up. His fingers ghost over the fabric, another giggle bubbling out of him. “For your cold feet,” Armie says quietly. When Timmy looks up, he’s smiling so brightly it nearly tears Timmy in two. It’s contagious, a smile of his own breaking out over Timmy’s face. 

“You’re such a dork,” he laughs, looking back down at the socks, his fingers tracing along the TCH embroidered on the tops in delicate writing. “God, I love you.” 

“Well I should hope so, considering.” Timmy looks up and finds Armie smiling softly at him. “Otherwise this would be  _really_  awkward,” he says, motioning to Timmy’s hand. All it does is make Timmy warm, his heart caught up between them as usual, his eyes sparkling as he looks back at Armie and then down at the ring he wears. 

“I’m going to wear these tomorrow, you know.” 

“I was banking on it,” Armie smirks. 

“Oh yeah?” Timmy asks, quirking an eyebrow, his hands folded in his lap over the socks.

“Hmm, well I was planning on giving them to you just before the ceremony so I wasn’t sure you’d wear them then or not. But later,” he shrugs, the smirk dancing on his lips. Timmy can see his mind working, knows how this will end because it always ends this way. “I figured you might wear them later.” 

“Later?” Timmy asks, smirking. 

“ _Later._  After we’ve cut the cake and everyone’s gone. When you can wear the socks.  _Only_ the socks _._ And your ring. _”_ And there it is, the effortless way Armie always seemed to fluster Timmy, to bring him to his knees and want nothing more than his body against his own. 

“I don’t know,” Timmy teases. “My feet might be warm but the rest of me might get cold.” 

“I can assure you that’s not going to happen,” Armie says pointedly, playing along. 

“Oh yeah?” Armie hums. “Do you promise?” Timmy teases again, his fingers reaching out and skating along Armie’s jaw. 

“I do.” 


End file.
